Seaman Apprentice Crunch

From the annals of cartoon understanding, today’s (Wayno / Piraro) Bizarro strip, which is incomprehensible if you don’t know a crucial piece of American popular culture (and Wayno’s title, “The Early Years”, won’t be much help to you):


(#1) Someday Seaman Apprentice Crunch will command his own ship, and then he’ll be Captain Crunch, familiarly known as Cap’n Crunch, and he’ll give that name to a sweet breakfast cereal that American kids have been enjoying for 60 years (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

Note that Crunch is drinking from an 8-ounce milk carton (while his naval companion is having a beer).

The strip shows the naval Crunch as a young man. You can see him in his later years of captaincy on the Cap’n Crunch box:


(#2) Hair gone white, but hawking his cereal with wild enthusiasm

From Wikipedia:

Cap’n Crunch is a corn and oat breakfast cereal manufactured since 1963 by Quaker Oats Company, a subsidiary of PepsiCo since 2001. Since the original product introduction, marketed simply as Cap’n Crunch, Quaker Oats has since introduced numerous flavors and seasonal variations, some for a limited time — and currently offers a Cap’n Crunch product line.

The original Cap’n Crunch cereal was developed to recall a recipe of brown sugar and butter over rice. It was one of the first cereals to use an oil coating to deliver its flavoring, which required an innovative baking process. The taste has been described as similar to the UK and Ireland cereal Golden Nuggets.

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